Robinson Crusoe after 300 Years ed. by Andreas K.E. Mueller and Glynis Ridley

Abstract

Reviewed by: Robinson Crusoe after 300 Years ed. by Andreas K.E. Mueller and Glynis Ridley Laura J. Rosenthal Andreas K.E. Mueller and Glynis Ridley, eds. Robinson Crusoe after 300 Years. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2021. 234pp. Although first published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe takes place in the Restoration and thus merits attention in this journal. This novel also, as Elizabeth Kraft points out in the current issue, has long spoken to many historical moments of isolation. As Andreas K.E. Mueller and Glynis Ridley’s excellent collection of essays celebrating the novel’s 300th anniversary shows, Defoe’s narrative has never stopped engaging readers and has worked its [End Page 91] way into Anglo-American culture in a surprising variety of ways. Essays in the collection by eleven scholars, both established and emerging, demonstrate how this intriguing novel continues to generate fresh interpretive possibilities. This collection of essays is a “must-have” for teaching and thinking about Defoe’s most famous novel. Robinson Crusoe after 300 Years opens with a section on “Generic Revisions,” in which Robinson becomes a Martian, a woman, and various animals. The Martian, a 2011 novel by Andy Weir and later (2015) a film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon, seems so obviously to be an update of Robinson Crusoe that it comes as a surprise to learn in Glynis Ridley’s essay that Defoe did not, in particular, inspire Weir. Ridley nevertheless makes a good case for links between the narratives, particularly with the point that both share the pleasure of “competence porn” (13). Further, both texts focus on the strange experience of extreme isolation and fulfilling the basic human need for food (15). Both Watney and Robinson have to reinvent themselves as agrarians. Robinson is transformed “from a hunter-gatherer into a farmer, penning livestock in a stockade and laying aside corn in expectation of future harvests” (15), rocketing through two stages of Scottish Enlightenment conjectural history. Watney must also learn to farm but approaches his tasks with irony and humor missing in Defoe’s novel. Despite the lack of any influence understood by the author, the popularity of The Martian reveals the persisting fascination of Robinson Crusoe’s embedded narrative. Geoffrey Sill offers a fascinating history of Robinson Crusoe’s "transgendering," mainly in the 19th century. Like Peter Pan, Robinson was often played on stage in this era by an actress in burlesque versions of the novel. Sill provides photographs of, among others, the actress Lydia Thompson, whose portrayal of Robinson in hairy goatskin-like mini-dresses caused alarm in some quarters. One troubling photo shows a blackface Friday kneeling before Robinson as the actress holds a switch in one hand and points to heaven with the other. Thus even in the nineteenth century, Friday’s character was confused with a Black African and interpreted as a figure for plantation slavery. In “Animal Crusoes,” Amy Hicks and Scott Pyrz discuss the Robinson Crusoe story’s various forms in children’s literature. The authors argue that these depictions challenge the assumption that children will identify with animals. The animal Crusoes express fear of being consumed, which divides them from their child readers (although the authors seem to forget that Defoe's Robinson was afraid of being cannibalized). Unlike Defoe’s characters, thought, animal Robinson is often unaware of his danger. Part II turns to “Mind and Matter.” Here Laura Brown turns to things in Robinson Crusoe to develop “a methodology by activating these meanings in relation both to the material world or worlds of the ‘thing,’ on the one hand, and the imaginative realism of representation, texts, and literary traditions, on the other” (82). To accomplish this, she juxtaposes Defoe’s novel with Isaac Newton’s “Queries” to his Optics (1704). Together, these texts represent the early eighteenth century as “a key moment in the modern redefinition of things.” Brown shows how studying “things” has always been crucial to understanding this novel, noting how many critics, economists, and philosophers have been drawn to Robinson’s pottery. Through his theory of gravity, by which objects were understood to be drawn to each other, Newton similarly redefined the thing: with Newton...